So now we might need a “levy” for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. In some ways, if people thought taxes for funding society were still worth it (as opposed to the new model of “everyone for themselves and screw the rest of you”) we wouldn’t need this. But the levy model comes about because every single bit of taxation now needs to be linked to it’s need — unless we’re talking war or refugee internment camps of course. Wish we’d had an Iraq war or Pacific solution levy, that’s for sure!

And our further enslavement to the economy is continuing with much speed. Peter Costello declares today he “delivered surpluses“, not that he delivered full employment or strong growth (or heaven forbid, a happy and prosperous population). Having a surplus is now the goal — not a residual outcome of good policy, but the actual policy goal in itself. And both sides have fallen for this, which makes it all the more nauseating.

Where is our Paul Krugman? The world economy continues to be depressed (due mostly now to a whole host of disastrous decisions), so to insist we have to cut spending now to achieve a magic surplus is misguided verging on insane, when we really should be focusing on stable economic growth and staving off the problems of the rest of the world (that still haven’t affected us).

Labor’s biggest problem on this one is that they can’t articulate their own successes, and by falling for the surplus obsession, they’ve set themselves up to fail on their own terms, let alone anyone else’s…